


tell me which is worse: living, or dying first?

by a_secondhand_sorrow



Series: I’ll use you as a warning sign [4]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Canon Compliant, I regret my life, Murphy siblings, evan didn’t really help the Murphy’s, more character studies, post-words fail, so thank you, the Murphys - Freeform, this is just me writing wildekinder’s stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 12:17:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18365852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_secondhand_sorrow/pseuds/a_secondhand_sorrow
Summary: Graves felt synonymous with a creepy movie, or deceased relatives you’d never really met but your parents went to see, or someone who’d lived a long, fulfilling life and been put to rest.‘Grave’ did not feel right when talking about where her barely-a-year-older brother was and would remain.***(or: there’s something quite beautiful to be found even when pain surrounds you like a noose around your neck)





	tell me which is worse: living, or dying first?

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [I Hope You Found Peace](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17260898) by [wildekinder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildekinder/pseuds/wildekinder). 



> This is inspired by “I hope you found peace” by Wildekinder, please go read it!
> 
> title from “you should see me in a crown” by billie eilish

Connor’s grave.

It still felt wrong to say; even though the fact Connor was dead and gone had long sunk in, graves felt synonymous with a creepy movie, or deceased relatives you’d never really met but your parents went to see, or someone who’d lived a long, fulfilling life and been put to rest.

 _Grave_ did not feel right when talking about where her barely-a-year-older brother was and would remain.

Even less, now, Zoe mused, since technically Connor had stopped aging, and she’d only keep aging, so that meant that someday soon she would surpass her older brother in age and continue to do so for the rest of her life, and how fucked up is _that_ thought—

A bitter laugh bubbled up her, entirely out of place, and then her hands dropped to her lap and she swallowed it as she remembered why she was there.

She was visiting Connor’s grave for the first time. Well, the first time since the funeral, but the funeral had been a crowded day full of a sorrow so thick she still felt it in every dream. This was the first real time she’d be there. The first time she’d be alone with her brother in years, if she really thought about it.

Her stomach churned, but she softly unlocked the door and propped it open, forcing herself out of the car.

The route to the family plot was engraved in Zoe’s memory, despite the fact that the last time she’d been there she’d barely been present. Somewhere through the hazy sorrow, her brain had stored the route and planted itself there.

She was there sooner than she expected.

There was no one else in the cemetery; she was truly alone. Well, alone with hundreds of the dead.

  
Including the one she wanted to see least.

(Maybe that was not stricly true. She didn’t know what kind of horrible people had been buried there, and as they say, better the monster you know.)

Her breath hitched a little as her eyes roved over everything in front of her: the too-fresh letters engraved on the stone, the grass above him just barely grown in, the ground softer than the harder ground she’d stood in.

It was too new.

Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath to steady herself, images flashed across the inside of her eyelids. Connor’s body at the hospital under a white sheet, the moment his coffin was lowered to the ground, the quiet way her family fell apart with Evan standing in front of them, his lies coming unraveled.

She opened her eyes again, and the graveyard was still there, Connor in front of her.

She lowered herself to her knees, somewhat shakily, trying to come up with something to say.

“Uh,” she started, voice coming out hoarse and hushed. She cleared her throat before continuing. “Hi, Connor. It’s me. Zoe.” She paused again, shaking her head a little. “But you know that. Obviously.”

Tearing at the grass a little, she continued. “Still, though, it’s me, your baby sister. Your former partner in crime. The worst fucking thing to ever happen to you, apparently.”

Pausing again as though she actually expected a response, Zoe tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. When her words had dissolved into the air to no reaction, she forged ahead. “Not that I’ll ever know for sure if that was you or the anger talking. Because, you know,” she gestured helplessly at the grave in front of her, “you’re dead.”

Funny-it was true, and she’d known it for a long time, but it still felt wrong to say.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m here, and well…I guess I just want to feel close to you, for once. I haven’t really felt close to you since-well, since Evan lied about you. I believed him, you know, I believed every word. I wanted it to be true. Even if I didn’t want to have been the reason you died. I just–”she paused again, clearing her throat. “I just wanted to believe you didn’t really hate me, and even though Evan’s lies made me feel like a shitty sister and that if I had been better you wouldn’t have killed yourself, it at least made me feel like you still loved me. That maybe you threatened to kill me, and broke into my room, and fucked me up possibly beyond repair-yeah, that one hurts to admit, doesn’t it?-but you never really meant it, because deep down, you cared about me.”

She stopped and stayed silent for a good minute as she wiped away the tears that had begun to form. She cast a cursory glance around the cemetery; it was really quite beautiful, in a macabre way, with the cracking headstones and gentle light filtered through the trees. “Maybe you meant all of it, and it was just wishful thinking on my part. Maybe you really did hate me and want me dead. But even though I acted like it, I didn’t want the same thing for you. I loved you, Connor. I still love you. But I hate you, too.”

She has to stop again, to control the onslaught of tears that began as she bargained with the empty cemetery. Leaves rustled above her, and she could feel the knees of her jeans beginning to grow damp from the earth beneath her. “You always protected me, when we were younger. I remember you filled Julie Martin’s backpack with worms because she made me cry over something stupid in like, second grade. I know that you don’t care about that and it’s stupid but-that’s the brother I remember and love. And God, I just-” she broke off, choking over a sob on her last word. “I miss you, and that’s ridiculous because I don’t even _know_ you, and the you I did know was violent and angry and pushed me away whenever I tried to get close. But with Evan, I-” she forced herself to pause, and fights to steady her breathing.

When she continues, her eyes are pressed closed so that all she sees is the mid-day light through her eyelids, which filter it and turn her world red. “I couldn’t help but feel like I should have tried harder and realized you were suffering. At least pushed you in the right direction, so that you could become friends with someone like Evan and break surface from your drowning. Maybe that’s true, and I should have done better, but at the end of the day, you were a shitty brother, and I was a shitty sister, and the whole world has been pretty shitty to us.”

She was forced to open her eyes; sobs were reaching her at full force. The light was an assault to her watering eyes, but through sobs, she heard a nearby car speed by and a bird singing from the safe height of a tree above her, cutting into her melancholy.

She couldn’t bring herself to enjoy it’s song.

There was still something empty, in her. An ache just behind her rib cage, keeping her up at night. She had hoped that gaping emptiness would change with this visit; although the emptiness didn’t feel gone, it felt different, somehow.

And so she forged on, through tears.

“You know, Connor, I-I really hate myself. Because to a certain extent, I always knew you’d be there to protect me at the end of the day. But you’re gone and I don’t know whether to love you or hate you, and this whole situation just got a hundred times worse because of Evan _fucking_ Hansen–” she cuts off for only the barest second, “and I _loved_ him, Connor, and I _still_ love him, and he made it easier to love _you_ , which might be what hurts the most. He kept me and mom and dad together and now we’re just ripped apart and-why did you have to do this?” And then she glares at the headstone through her tears, as though it could account for her brother. “You were an asshole, and maybe I couldn’t help you, but-couldn’t you try? Couldn’t you think about what you’d leave behind? I–” she cuts off when she hears the rev of an engine in the distance, and it’s only then that she could feel how hard she was crying. If she stayed much longer, it could be difficult to leave.

So she stood, as quietly as possible. Aware that she had been getting steadily louder and louder earlier, she whispered her final words. “I used to feel that no one would care if I killed myself, and that’s clearly how you felt. If you’d just–” she broke off for a sniffle, “–thought, for a moment, about what you were doing? We’d be better.”

A bird above her finished its song, before taking flight and rustling the leaves around it.

She’d tried to convince Evan to come with her, as if to convince herself. But she was alone now. No one was there for her to hide behind. It was just her and her brother shadowed in the corners of her eyes.

She didn’t want to stay, but she couldn’t leave.

Her life was the same stifling loneliness as before. She still got death threats online. She couldn’t walk down the hall at school without whispers following her. She’d go home, and Larry would be sitting at the kitchen table, hiding behind the paper. Cynthia would be cooking a lasagna or watching The Secret or something, hiding her puffy eyes. Evan would be across town, and Zoe would be thinking about him and trying not to think about her parents, and she wasn’t supposed to think about him but she couldn’t stop.

Zoe took a deep breath. “You took everything from me. Everything I do now, it’s just-I’m just going through the motions, and I don’t even want to fucking be here, and I want to be nothing like you, but _God_ sometimes I wish that I was-”

  
She couldn’t even bring herself to say it.

“I’m not living, Connor. No one has, since you died. This is no life for me to live. I _hate_ you, Connor, for everything you left behind, for all the things you’ve exposed us to.” Again, empty lunch tables and impossibly long afternoons and the feeling of wanting to crawl out of her own skin flashed behind her eyes, her she tried to ignore it.

“Some fucking freshman’s gonna ask me about my family and I’m gonna freeze or choke up or-I’m gonna be with this for my whole life, and we could’ve just-fixed things, or tried to. _God_ , Connor, I hate you for ruining everything like this. But I love you, too, and I miss you, and I hope you’re happy, at least.”

She managed to hold it together for the walk back to the car, but almost as soon as she shut her door she broke down completely, crying harder than she did when Connor had been found dead, or at the funeral, or when Evan told them it had been a lie. It was uncomfortable, and she didn’t feel ready to drive away yet. The thought of going back to her house, her kitchen, her room which she grew to despise more each day, filled her with more dread then she’d ever imagined. She reached for her phone automatically, to call Evan-he always calmed her down-until she remembered everything and only cried harder.

But eventually, her tears stopped, and she lay her head against the headrest, a headache already working it’s way behind her eyes. She didn’t feel happy, or at peace, or less empty, but she felt different, somehow. Different was better than the suffocating sameness of day after day. Different was all she could hope for.

She’d drive home, and maybe Cynthia would look up and catch her eye and smile, really smile at her. Or maybe Larry would say “How was your drive?” Or maybe nothing would change, and she’d only continue wondering what would have happened if she was the one in the physical coffin instead of the line she was waking between alive and dead.

Maybe it’d get worse.

Maybe it’d get better.

The only way to find out was to move forward.

  
With one final swipe at her eyes, Zoe turned her key in the ignition and pulled out of the cemetery, an almost imperceptible weight lifted off of her shoulders.


End file.
